Cherwell can reveal this week that out of Oxford’s science students Chemists are the hardest working, while Mathematicians not only have the lightest workload, but take the most time off from their academic studies.
Our subject comparison survey also shows that among the arts students, Historians spend the least time working for their degrees, especially when compared to English and Law students.
The survey also demonstrates for the first time the extent to which students skip lectures that are integral to their courses.
Arts students claim that they attend far fewer lectures than they are supposed to. Although 51 per cent claiming that they should attend more than five hours of lectures a week, only 19 per cent actually do.
Over one in four Historians attends no lectures at all, while only one in ten PPE students say the same thing.
What’s more, over 50 per cent of Historians claim that they write only a maximum of one essay per week. 50 per cent also say that they take two or more days off per week from their academic work, more than any other arts subject.
Second year historian, Nick Worsley, defended his subject. “It’s all about self-discipline. We may write less than other subjects but we work hard and consistently,” he said.
However, another second year historian from St Hugh’s said, “I would go into more depth about why historians seem to do so little but right now I have too much work.”
Historians were not the only students to confess to not attending lectures. Lawyers claim that on average they should attend five lectures a week, but one in five lawyers admits to never attending a single one. This can perhaps be explained by the heavy workload of a Law degree, indicated by the survey.
Lawyers spend the most amount of time confined to the library out of all the arts students, with 10 per cent of lawyers saying that they spend over 50 hours a week inside a library and almost half of all essays taking over 24 hours to read and write for.
This contrasts with the average Arts student for whom a normal essay takes 18 hours.
Law student Natasha Hausdorff from Lincoln College accepted that lawyers worked hard, but said, “I think the great thing about this university is that the workload is always challenging. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Yet over 50 per cent of Law and Classics students say they find their workload too high “all the time” or “quite often.” Only 19 per cent of historians said the same thing.
As far as speedily reeling off essays goes, PPE has the highest proportion of last-minute essay writers. One fifth of PPE students claim that on average they read for and write each of their essays in under 10 hours, with only 5 per cent saying that they spent more than 30 hours on each essay.
Contrary to this, 15 per cent of English students say they spend over 30 hours on each of their essays while over one in three never take a day off from academic work.
Despite dedicating a relatively large amount of time towards their degrees, 38 per cent of English students say that they always feel guilty for not working more.
This may explain why English students are the most likely to forgo drinking heavily of all the arts students. Despite claiming to socialise as much as any other subject, nearly 50 per cent of English students never drink more than eight units of alcohol.
The same percentage of History students say that they drink this amount on two, three or four nights a week.
Arts students are also more likely to smoke than scientists. PPE students spark-up the most, with one in five admitting to smoking, while less than one in ten English students smokes.
As might be expected, science students tend to spend less time than arts students working independently, but have a large proportion of their time taken up by lectures and labs.
Within the science subjects, Cherwell’s subject comparison survey showed that Chemists have the heaviest workload while Mathematicians tend to spend substantially less time working, giving them a lot more free-time to socialise.
Chemists not only attend more lectures than other science students, but spend more time working in labs every week.
The average time spent on a problem sheet for a Chemist and Physicist is 12 hours, while Mathematicians spend an average six hours per sheet. As many as one in five chemists spend an average of 18 hours or over on every problem sheet.
With less time taken up by work, Maths students are able to spend far more time socialising than any other science, or arts, student does. 94 per cent of maths students claim to spend 3 or more nights a week socialising, compared to an average of 70 per cent of all scientists.
Despite socialising more, Mathematicians drink the least units of alcohol per week. 41 per cent say they never drink more than 8 units, compared to a 30 per cent average for other scientists.
Mathematician Mark Brierly, second year at St Anne’s, said, “Just because we have time off, doesn’t mean we get drunk all the time. I get away with not going to many lectures because all the notes are online.”
In contrast, Chemists, who have more work, take significantly less time off from their studies, with almost half not taking a single day off from their academic studies.
Despite this, they claim to drink the most, as the majority of Chemists consume more than 8 units of alcohol at least twice a week.
The increased workload of Chemistry, Engineering and Physics could be a reason for the fact that students studying these subjects feel their work load is ‘too high’. This is represented by 52 per cent, 54 per cent, and 30 per cent of students respectively saying that they felt work was too high ‘all the time’ or ‘quite often’. By comparison, only 23per cent of Mathematicians felt the same way.
St Hugh’s JCR President, Liam O’Connor, a third year Chemist, agreed with Cherwell’s findings that Chemists are the hardest working scientists. He said, “I would say that the rigid structure of the course, consisting of approximately 12 hours of lectures per week, approximately 10 hours of labs and up to two problem sheets a week definitely can cause a person to be over-worked.”
“I don’t think there is enough time to fully understand what we are supposed to be learning. When exams came round I felt like I was learning aspects of topics for the first time and I understand this is the case for other scientists, notably engineers.”
The high pressure of a Chemistry degree may be to blame for the fact that Chemists smoke significantly more than the average science student. 15 per cent of Chemists smoke, while only 3per cent of Physicists do, with the average for scientists being 12 per cent.
When it comes to lectures, scientists are more likely to attend all of the lectures that they are supposed to. 95 per cent say they should attend 5 or more lectures per week, and 82 per cent say they actually do, which contrasts strongly with the turnout for arts lectures.
O’Connor continued, “In comparison to an arts student, whose lectures I understand are not quite so vital, they can often succeed without attending a single lecture in their undergraduate life. From experience with friends on art subjects, they tend to be able to plan their working day out according to their own needs. As a scientist however, labs and lectures prevent students from doing this.”
In total, 625 students responded to this survey. The “science subjects” grouping was comprised of Chemistry, Physics, Maths and Engineer students, as these subjects provided the largest sample and were the most “pure” science subject results within the survey. The “arts subjects” was comprised of English, PPE, Classics, History and Law students as these subject fulfilled the same criteria.
